Congress okays Trump’s NPR and PBS funding reduce

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Welcome to The Logoff: The Home handed a invoice clawing again billions in federal funding for international support and public media early Friday morning, sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk for a signature.

What does the invoice do? The invoice, known as a rescissions bundle, focused about $9 billion in whole funding and originates from a White Home request to withdraw funding that had already been allotted. The overwhelming majority of that cash comes from international support applications. The rest, some $1.1 billion, was cash for the Company for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds PBS, NPR, and their affiliate stations.

What does this imply for international support? The rescissions request impacts $7.9 billion in international support spending, together with cash for migration and refugee help, worldwide peacekeeping, improvement help, and catastrophe aid.

One international support program, PEPFAR, escaped. A $400 million reduce to the enormously efficient HIV/AIDS prevention program, which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives in its 20-plus years of existence, was faraway from the rescissions bundle after pushback by Senate Republicans.

What about public media? Nationwide Public Radio receives solely a small portion of its funding from CPB, however the cuts stand to influence native affiliate stations and PBS extra considerably. CPB warned in a press release that the invoice’s passage will imply “many native public radio and tv stations will likely be pressured to close down,” and famous it may additionally influence entry to emergency alerts.

Why does this matter? This was a comparatively small amount of cash within the context of the federal price range, however the misplaced funding can have actual impacts. The invoice additionally displays an ongoing effort by Trump to grab the facility of the purse from Congress. As Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one among two Republican senators to oppose the measure, put it, “What we’re getting now could be a path from the White Home and being advised, ‘That is the precedence. We wish you to execute on it.’”

And with that, it’s time to log out…

Twenty-six new websites have been just added to the UNESCO World Heritage List , bringing the whole to 1,248. The brand new additions embody 4 palaces in Germany, constructed by Bavaria’s “Mad King,” Ludwig II; the coastal and marine ecosystems of the Bijagós Archipelago in Guinea-Bissau; and putting stone megaliths in northern France. NPR has the total listing here — it’s a enjoyable reminder of variety and wonder all world wide.